I just purchased a refurbished laptop from Dell, It came with windows Vista as the opperating system. I want to run Windows XP, which came on the previous laptop. How do I do this install?
You'll want to make sure Dell has XP drivers available for your laptop.
You change the boot order in the BIOS, to boot off the XP disc. You'll press any key when prompted. You'll want to delete any existing partitions and do a full format. That will wipe out the drive and start the install process.
I wouldn't go as far as saying it would be a more stable system. Windows 7 is nice, but there are still some issues. XP has been around for a while, and is a more polished product.